Hello and welcome.
For our entire journey today,
I'll be reading poetry that you can just allow to wash through your being.
You may put this on while you are practicing yoga,
Painting,
Driving,
However feels nourishing to you.
So this first poem is called The Guesthouse by Rumi.
This being human is a guesthouse.
Every morning,
A new arrival.
A joy,
A depression,
A meanness.
Some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all,
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture.
Still,
Treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought,
The shame,
The malice.
Meet them out the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
The Guesthouse by Rumi.
This is a short and sweet one by John Green.
The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.
We are not these bodies.
We are these souls that reside within.
And though it hurts to love the ones we love,
It is often only in their departure from our lives that our heart can break open to hold and truly honor the lessons they came into our lives to teach us.
By Albert Bastiet.
Shakespeare said that art is a mirror held up to nature.
And that's what it is.
The nature is your nature.
And all of these wonderful poetic images of mythology are referring to something in you.
When your mind is trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself,
You have misread the image.
The inner world is the world of your requirements,
And your energies,
And your structure,
And your possibilities that meets the outer world.
And the outer world is the field of your incarnation.
That's where you are.
You got to keep both going.
As novelists said,
The seat of the soul is there where the inner and outer worlds meet.
By Joseph Campbell.
Not for me,
Bondage.
Not for me,
Liberation.
I am beyond such nonsense.
The sun is not trapped when it shines in a river,
Illuminating the lives of the fishes.
Nor is the sun freed again when it reflects off a ripple back into the sky.
Bondage,
Freedom,
Notions arising from fear and separation.
Look upon the universe and see only me.
This is from the Radiant Sutras by Lauren Roche.
Veins like rivers,
Breath like the wind,
Blood like the tides,
Tears like the ocean,
Heart beating to the mother's drum,
Ancient exploding stars in every cell.
The flower knows,
The stones do too.
Won't you remember,
You were never perfect,
You never fell,
You arose,
Heaven perfecting itself.
Light seeded into matter,
Always,
Only,
Ever unfolding.
Rebecca Campbell.
The most important questions are the unanswerable ones.
So sacred,
So intimate,
So risky,
They are near unaskable too.
It takes courage to ask them.
Fall in love with these questions.
Let them be naked today,
Unresolved,
Unanswered,
Unapologetic,
Complete in their incompleteness.
Follow the questions of the heart,
Deep into the mystery.
Jeff Foster.
The first element of true love is loving kindness.
The essence of loving kindness is being able to offer happiness.
You can be the sunshine for another person.
You can't offer happiness until you have it for yourself.
So build a home inside by accepting yourself and learning to love and heal yourself.
Learn how to practice mindfulness in such a way that you can create moments of happiness and joy for your own nourishment.
Then you have something to offer the other person.
Thich Nhat Hanh.
Ironic but one of the most intimate acts of our body is death.
So beautiful appeared my death,
Knowing who then I would kiss.
I died a thousand times before I died.
Die before you die said the prophet Muhammad.
Have wings that feared ever touch the sun.
I was born when all I once feared I could love.
The Sufi saint of Iraq,
Rabia Al-Aldawiyah.
Be conscious of this unconscious prayer of your breath,
For she is the most holy place of pilgrimage.
She wishes for you to enter this temple,
Where each breath is adoration of the infinite for the incarnate form.
Lauren Roche,
The Radiant Sutras.
And we'll be closing with one more poem,
Sharing my own writing with you.
You must keep scraping off the cobwebs of doubt.
You must keep dusting off the gathering layer of fear.
It is vital to care for yourself through the moments of in-between.
Because when the time comes and the clouds part,
The rays of creativity will reach towards your skin once again.
But built-up resentment is impossible to penetrate.
The cloak of self-doubt is elusive,
Convincing you,
You can't do it,
That you're not good enough,
It's too much effort with too little reward.
Allow yourself to remain open,
So you can hear the whispers of your next step.
Allow your heart to remain open in the waiting,
So that when it comes,
You will be ready to embrace it.
Allow yourself to remain open when life hasn't yet provided you a reason to.
Because when it does,
Then you won't miss it.
By Jordan Rowe
